Background
Abolitionist Interactions
Birmingham: The Land of Freedom?
Directions for Learning
Background
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, antislavery debate in Birmingham could be heard from people of different racial origins and class backgrounds. There is a long and important history of black antislavery activists in the area, which can first be traced back to the visit of Olaudah Equiano in 1790.
While many local abolitionist groups remained white middle class organizations, it would be the voices of Africans, West Indians and African-Americans who often provided first hand evidence against slavery, as well as the physical, intellectual and creative spark of resistance that lit the fuse of the most striking campaigns. In this context, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Moses Roper, William Wells Brown, Henry Highland Garnet, Samuel Ringgold Ward, J.W.C. Pennington, Alexander Crummell, and the Rev Peter Stanford all have connections with Birmingham and surrounding local areas. More may yet be discovered.
Abolitionist Interactions
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, black activists pursuing anti-slavery agendas would visit Birmingham for a variety of reasons. Some, after escaping slavery, sought safe refuge from the oppressive plantations systems of the West Indies and America. Others arrived as well-educated antislavery speakers, lecturers and authors, intent on promoting radical ideas of freedom among local audiences. Some were religious leaders, who communicated with local churches. Other may have been labourers: ex-slaves who arrived in Birmingham alongside the great cosmopolitan influx of people from cultures all around the globe, a trend that allowed the town’s development into a major site of labour and industry. Some visited Birmingham briefly; some would end up settling in the area. Some left partial records of their activities; the majority did not. We now need to reconstruct their stories from the fragments left in their passing.
In the town, abolitionists from racial different backgrounds interacted in different ways. For instance, the Birmingham activist Joseph Sturge saw it as vital to acquire information from, to practically support and also to learn from those that had experienced slavery first hand. On his visit to the West Indies in 1837, Sturge provided the money to help emancipate a young black labourer names James Williams, and then helped him to publish ‘A Narrative of Events since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, An Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica’ as part of his campaign to end the West Indies apprenticeship. (See Resources). Yet their relationship was never an easy one; and the freed William’s is known to have soon returned to his family the West Indies
At the same time, other black activists were carrying out their own means of independent resistance that sometimes brought them in contact with Birmingham. A good example of this is the great African-American orator and intellectual, Frederick Douglass. The developing relationship between black and white antislavery campaigners in Birmingham was characterised by co-operation, argument, disagreement and, ultimately, shared struggle.
Birmingham: The Land of Freedom?
After passing the emancipation acts of 1807, 1833 and 1838, England promised a new home of liberty for those who still legally remained slaves in America and the West Indies- but only for those who were somehow able to make the dangerous and expensive journey. In reality, for those who did manage to escape to England, it is certain that ex-slave and black abolitionist alike did not always find it to be the ‘land of freedom’ that they had imagined. Once here, they often experienced racism from a wary local populace.
At the same time, Birmingham’s history of nonconformist ideas meant it was often sensitive to the stories of black experience. It was also a town which had been starting to draw many different people from around the world in search of a chance to work and settle. The complicated and still emerging details of the lives of black ex-slaves in Britain and Birmingham suggests they were not here merely as passive victims of great historical injustice, but as powerful agents of their own fortune, vital sources of activism in the global struggle for social justice, individuals whose personal stories vitally contributed to British culture and political freedoms. The role of these activists mark some of Birmingham’s earliest involvement with racial diversity.
Directions for Learning
Starting points for further discussion, or your own archive research, might include:
Why is so little evidence left of black antislavery campaigning in Birmingham, and how can we find new ways of using archives and other sources to recover their lost histories?
How does the work of these nineteenth century black activists anticipate later 20th century campaigns by people and communities from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds in Birmingham? |
Frederick Douglass
James Watkins
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